We uncovered lots of fascinating pieces of Disney history while working on Ward Kimballâs biographyâyou know, the one that the Disney Companyâs lawyers wonât allow you to see. Among the discoveries were film reels of Wardâs home movies, which I can report are a fair deal more interesting than the average personâs home movies.
We transferred those reels, and with permission, Iâm sharing a rarely seen piece of movie footage shot by Ward. Tomorrow, it will be exactly 65 years since this film was recorded (April 4, 1948). In it, Ward and Walt Disney visit the home of Dick Jackson, a wealthy businessman who operated a scale-railroad in the backyard of his Beverly Hills home.
Kimball had been a close friend of Jacksonâs for years, and often dropped by for steamups. A little over six years earlierâDecember 7, 1941, to be exactâas he was driving to Jacksonâs for a steamup, he heard on the radio that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. The news unsettled him momentarily, but he âforgot it all with Jacksonâs locomotive,â he wrote in his journal. Backyard railroading had the magical effect of allowing people to put the real world on pause, even if only for a few hours at a time.